The 10-Second Trick That Can Help You Lose Weight

The 10-Second Trick That Can Help You Lose Weight

There are plenty of arguments that advocate throwing away the bathroom scale, but a new study suggests daily weigh-ins may be a key component to weight loss.

The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE and conducted by Elina Helander and co-authors from Tampere Univeristy of Technology in Finland, sampled 2,838 weight observations from 40 people attending a health program and found that when people weighed themselves daily they tended to lose weight, while taking breaks from daily weigh-ins for longer than one month led to weight gain in certain cases.

This isn't the first time the odds have been in favor of the bathroom scale.

"Get out of bed, use the bathroom, then step on the scale. Every day," personal trainer Marshall Roy advised in an article for Be Well Philly earlier this year. "It will give you a very reliable baseline and daily data point. It will fluctuate a little bit day to day, but when you look at all the numbers over the course of a week or month, trends will be obvious."

And a University of Minnesota study, cited by Prevention magazine, surveyed 1,800 dieting adults and found that people who weighed themselves every day lost about 12 pounds over the course of two years, while people who weighed themselves every week lost only 6 pounds.

So if weight loss is one of your New Year's resolutions, be advised: The scale may be a better friend than you thought.

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